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Post by vegasjames on Mar 15, 2022 2:12:57 GMT -5
I've kind of thought That too many Chemicals Will Disrupt Biology That Theory Has been for awhile A few years later Unfortunately It became True They say they still don’t understand the long term effects on humans. It’s been proven at this point that wildlife has been effected. They have actually found fish that have taken on female characteristics due to exposure. I personally believe the proof is in the pudding when it comes to humans. Look at the average male physique up until the 50’s. Now look at the average male physique. Excess body fat and skyrocketing cases of gynocomastia. “Studies show that men's testosterone levels have been declining for decades. The most prominent, a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men's testosterone levels since the 1980s”. I believe this is a direct correlation between consumer products and pollution. This is not all due to endocrine disruptors. Increased body fat is in large part due to the increased consumption of sugary crap with a decline is physical activity at the same time. Kids used to eat better and played outside, rode bikes, etc. Today junk food is a major part of the average diet and kids tend to sit all day playing video games while kids and adults also spend way too much time on the computer than getting proper exercise.
Then the increase in body fat also contributes further to this issue as fat cells produce estrogen. The estrogen also suppresses the thyroid, which in turn can lead to more weight gain. And the increase in body fat can lead to insulin resistance by blocking insulin receptors. This leads to abnormally high insulin levels, which increases body fat production.
Alcohol use is another issue. Beer, gin, whiskey and ouzo are some great examples of estrogenic alcohols. Beer bellies are actually due to the estrogenic effect of the beer. Estrogens stimulate fat formation and men tend to deposit most body fat around the stomach. Male alcoholics are also prone to gynocomastia due the estrogenic effects of some alcohols.
Gynocomastia is also a side effect of various pharmaceutical drugs, especially ones that damage the liver or lower or inhibit stomach acid levels such as antacids and proton pump inhibitors ("acid blockers"). The liver is the primary source of estrogen breakdown. When pharmaceutical drugs damage the liver this impairs the liver's ability to break down the body's own estrogens and xenoestrogens properly increasing body fat, and increasing the risk of gynocomastia. Decreasing stomach acid leads to decreases in methylation since the nutrients required for production of the methyl donor SAMe are dependent on sufficient stomach acid levels for absorption. The liver requires methyl donors to break down excess estrogens. This can also explain things such the "middle age spread", general weight gain and increased incidences of gynocomastia with aging as stomach acid levels naturally start really declining after the age of 40.
There are still various other factors that can account for declining testosterone levels and increased cases of gynocomastia such as stress. increased antibiotics not only prescribed but also in foods, etc.
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 15, 2022 2:21:10 GMT -5
The endocrine disruptors are powerful xenoestrogens such as bisphenol A (BPA), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and phthalates. They are not found in all plastics though. Polycarbonate used to be a major source as BPA is a monomer for its production. Polycarbonate is also used to make those large blue hard plastic water bottles, line metal cans used for foods and on thermal paper for receipts. Manufacturers though are now making BPA free polycarbonate.
Endrocrine disruptors are also found in other sources such as cosmetics, herbicides and pesticides.
My biggest concern is with the phthalates used as plasticizers for things like teething rings and baby bottle nipples.
Oh yeah. I’m fully aware. It’s actually pretty crazy just how many EDC’s there are out there. I was reading a study the other day about how components from birth control are excreted then make their way into local waterways that eventually get consumed. Another one was about fresh water shrimp that all contained trace amounts of cocaine. Things people consume get peed out, then eventually taken back up. Lots on the topic. Just pretty crazy when you start to dig deep into it. Yes, I knew someone once who loved her cocaine. I told her instead of buying the stuff that she should just collect her urine and recycle it out. A portion of the cocaine is excreted as pure cocaine and the rest as ecgonine metabolites, that also happen to an intermediate of cocaine metabolism.
It is not just stuff getting excreted from the body in urine and feces. People also flush a lot of old drugs down the toilet that also end up in the waters we often use for our own drinking water, or waters we derive foods from. A much better way to dispose of old medications is to simply mix them with old coffee grounds. The tannins in the coffee are very effective in binding many medications rendering them inactive. Same reason medications should never be taken with coffee or other high tannin sources such as black or oolong tea.
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Post by rockjunquie on Mar 15, 2022 13:01:28 GMT -5
Oh yeah. I’m fully aware. It’s actually pretty crazy just how many EDC’s there are out there. I was reading a study the other day about how components from birth control are excreted then make their way into local waterways that eventually get consumed. Another one was about fresh water shrimp that all contained trace amounts of cocaine. Things people consume get peed out, then eventually taken back up. Lots on the topic. Just pretty crazy when you start to dig deep into it.
Same reason medications should never be taken with coffee or other high tannin sources such as black or oolong tea.
I had no idea! Thanks! I don't take mine with coffee, but it's good to know NOT to do it.
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Post by parfive on Mar 15, 2022 14:47:10 GMT -5
Not unlike tracking the corona via the sewer system.
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 15, 2022 18:10:26 GMT -5
Not unlike tracking the corona via the sewer system. Their doing this is actually rather stupid since there is no common lab test that can confirm the presence of covid nor any particular virus for that matter. The only way this can be done is with electron microscopy, which is extremely difficult to do, very time consuming and super expensive.
They are likely using polymerase chain reaction (PCR, "viral load"), which does not confirm the presence nor activity of any particular virus. The test has numerous accuracy issues and is largely based on guesswork.
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Post by Peruano on Mar 15, 2022 19:01:40 GMT -5
A personal experience. I traveled to Peru (south of Lima) in the early 1980's to salvage leatherback turtle carcasses that had been butchered, discarded, and mummified on an area behind a fishing port. I was interested in skeletal material but was able to superficially examine gut contents in the shells that had dried on the beach. Fully 13% of the individuals examined had plastic bags and other plastics in their guts (and we probably undersampled due to the dubious manner in which the turtles had been discarded). Remember these were the ones that were harvested alive by the fishermen (the ones that died from gut impactions must have been on the bottom of the ocean. In many cases the plastics were twisted into knots that would have soon occluded the gut and interfered with digestion. Note that leatherbacks eat jellyfish and plastic gabage bags are similar to floating jellyfish. Also important is that this was along a very sparsely populated coast of South America. What must it be like off Mexico, New York, or Europe?
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 15, 2022 19:59:57 GMT -5
A personal experience. I traveled to Peru (south of Lima) in the early 1980's to salvage leatherback turtle carcasses that had been butchered, discarded, and mummified on an area behind a fishing port. I was interested in skeletal material but was able to superficially examine gut contents in the shells that had dried on the beach. Fully 13% of the individuals examined had plastic bags and other plastics in their guts (and we probably undersampled due to the dubious manner in which the turtles had been discarded). Remember these were the ones that were harvested alive by the fishermen (the ones that died from gut impactions must have been on the bottom of the ocean. In many cases the plastics were twisted into knots that would have soon occluded the gut and interfered with digestion. Note that leatherbacks eat jellyfish and plastic gabage bags are similar to floating jellyfish. Also important is that this was along a very sparsely populated coast of South America. What must it be like off Mexico, New York, or Europe? Yes, jellyfish are a favorite food for sea turtles. Between the plastic bags they are mistaking for jellyfish and the widespread tumors developing from their immune systems being suppressed from agricultural runoff, I am surprised sea turtles are not more endangered than they are.
This is my sea turtle sculpture I made I call "Sea Hunt" made with various stones. The jellyfish are calcite bells and glass tentacles.
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brybry
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Post by brybry on Mar 15, 2022 23:23:05 GMT -5
A personal experience. I traveled to Peru (south of Lima) in the early 1980's to salvage leatherback turtle carcasses that had been butchered, discarded, and mummified on an area behind a fishing port. I was interested in skeletal material but was able to superficially examine gut contents in the shells that had dried on the beach. Fully 13% of the individuals examined had plastic bags and other plastics in their guts (and we probably undersampled due to the dubious manner in which the turtles had been discarded). Remember these were the ones that were harvested alive by the fishermen (the ones that died from gut impactions must have been on the bottom of the ocean. In many cases the plastics were twisted into knots that would have soon occluded the gut and interfered with digestion. Note that leatherbacks eat jellyfish and plastic gabage bags are similar to floating jellyfish. Also important is that this was along a very sparsely populated coast of South America. What must it be like off Mexico, New York, or Europe? Yes, jellyfish are a favorite food for sea turtles. Between the plastic bags they are mistaking for jellyfish and the widespread tumors developing from their immune systems being suppressed from agricultural runoff, I am surprised sea turtles are not more endangered than they are.
This is my sea turtle sculpture I made I call "Sea Hunt" made with various stones. The jellyfish are calcite bells and glass tentacles.
Love it!!!
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Post by parfive on Mar 16, 2022 1:49:10 GMT -5
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Post by parfive on Mar 16, 2022 2:29:52 GMT -5
Peruano Forty years ago, wow. Back then, plastic bags at the supermarket were a new thing and bottled water was still a glass bottle. Now it’s hard to buy something that isn’t packed in plastic and there’s no end in sight as the oil companies add millions of tons to yearly production.
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Mar 16, 2022 9:16:00 GMT -5
A personal experience. I traveled to Peru (south of Lima) in the early 1980's to salvage leatherback turtle carcasses that had been butchered, discarded, and mummified on an area behind a fishing port. I was interested in skeletal material but was able to superficially examine gut contents in the shells that had dried on the beach. Fully 13% of the individuals examined had plastic bags and other plastics in their guts (and we probably undersampled due to the dubious manner in which the turtles had been discarded). Remember these were the ones that were harvested alive by the fishermen (the ones that died from gut impactions must have been on the bottom of the ocean. In many cases the plastics were twisted into knots that would have soon occluded the gut and interfered with digestion. Note that leatherbacks eat jellyfish and plastic gabage bags are similar to floating jellyfish. Also important is that this was along a very sparsely populated coast of South America. What must it be like off Mexico, New York, or Europe? Yes, jellyfish are a favorite food for sea turtles. Between the plastic bags they are mistaking for jellyfish and the widespread tumors developing from their immune systems being suppressed from agricultural runoff, I am surprised sea turtles are not more endangered than they are.
This is my sea turtle sculpture I made I call "Sea Hunt" made with various stones. The jellyfish are calcite bells and glass tentacles.
vegasjames your sea turtle is beautiful!
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Post by rockjunquie on Mar 16, 2022 12:15:35 GMT -5
vegasjames You've been hiding all that talent!!!?? That turtle is amazing! I saw it first and thought it was a museum piece then saw that you made it. So, naturally I had to go and take a closer look. Do you want to tell us all the rocks involved? I know what some of them are. What are the tentacles made from?
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Post by jasoninsd on Mar 16, 2022 16:16:20 GMT -5
vegasjames - I'll chime in on that sculpture! HOLY COW THAT'S AMAZING!
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 16, 2022 18:22:12 GMT -5
Yes, jellyfish are a favorite food for sea turtles. Between the plastic bags they are mistaking for jellyfish and the widespread tumors developing from their immune systems being suppressed from agricultural runoff, I am surprised sea turtles are not more endangered than they are.
This is my sea turtle sculpture I made I call "Sea Hunt" made with various stones. The jellyfish are calcite bells and glass tentacles.
vegasjames your sea turtle is beautiful! Thank you. Did this for a contest at our rock club. They used to have an annual contest where we submitted something made with stone. I had lots of green rock and I love the ocean and ocean creatures so I decided to go with a sea turtle.
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 16, 2022 19:19:15 GMT -5
vegasjames You've been hiding all that talent!!!?? That turtle is amazing! I saw it first and thought it was a museum piece then saw that you made it. So, naturally I had to go and take a closer look. Do you want to tell us all the rocks involved? I know what some of them are. What are the tentacles made from? Thanks, this was my first and only sculpture. So, it was a lot of trial and error. I will go through the process.
I started with a couple of steel cookie sheets. I drew out the pattern for the top (carpace) and bottom (plastron) of the shell.
I cut out the patterns then hammered them at an angle to get the curves. Then I glued these together to form the framework for the shell.
Next, I printed out the patterns for the carapace and plastron the same size as the framework and used this as a pattern to cut and shape all the individual pieces for the shell. There were around 100 individual pieces that had to be cut and shaped.
The carapace was cut using a jade, and the plastron was cut using mudstone. Once all the pieces were glued in place the spaces were filled with grout mixed with water based acrylic paint to tint it to the color I wanted.
Funny story. I took the shell to my meditation group to show my friends and one lady came up and said "oh, poor turtle". We told her it was fake and she just stood there with a blank look on her face. Had to explain to her it was metal and stone.
The head, tail and flippers I an not 100% sure what the stone is. A couple of different labs came up with different results. The XRD lab in New Mexico said 50% sanidine and 50% quartz and the XRF lab in California said feldspar. I doubt either are correct as I can scratch a quartz crystal with the stone and both of the lab results would make it softer. Was told it was silicified variscite by some members at the club, and some does contain the related turquoise, but I bought a Chelsea filter and checked it for chromium and did not show as having any and the lab in Northern Nevada that did the atomic absorption spectrometer test did not test for aluminum, which I needed to see if it were variscite and do not recall if they detected chromium. I bought a spectrometer and tested and it showed a chalcedony, although I have also found some of the same stone in a chalky form more consistent with a variscite. So bottom line is that I have no idea what this stone is yet. All I know it was very hard to shape. I covered parts of the head, and the flippers with a black permanent marker then used a Dremel with a diamond bit to cut through the marker back to the stone to create the patterns.
The claws are made from marble I collected here in Southern Nevada.
The pupil of the eye was cut using small core drills from obsidian. The pupil was glued in place and coated with multiple layers of varnish to get that realistic eye look.
The jellyfish bells were made from an orange calcite core sample. The hardest one to do was the one the turtle is eating. Had to figure out how to get it in the mouth. So made 2 parts and shaped them so it wold look like it was being squished in the beak, then glued them in place. The jellyfish tentacles are made from glass. My brother used to do glass blowing and apprenticed under the number 2 glassblower in the U.S. at the time. I used to go down to the studio and hang out helping out with sandblasting glass pieces for them and reading the glass books on the shelf when I was bored. So I learned some odds and ends on working with glass. And it was the only thing I could think of that was close to stone that would be strong enough for the tentacles and would be easier to work.
The "coral" is Nevada Tiffany stone.
All of the flesh was made using grout, which also allowed me to make things such as the wrinkles from the turtle turning its head. The beak I got the color from repeatedly building up the beak in layers while staining the payers with a marker, then sanding it down repeatedly with a dirty sanding sponge. Once I got it where I wanted it I sealed all the grout with a think layer of varnish.
To support the turtle I bent a 3/8 inch threaded steel rod. The rod was inserted in to the shell all the way up to the neck then the shell filled with polyurethane foam filler, which also helps prevent the metal framework of the shell from flexing, which would otherwise pop off the stone. The rod come out back by the right rear flipper then goes through a hole I drilled in the Nevada Tiffany stone and the wood and I recessed an area under the wood base for a washer and nut to tighten up the while thing in place.
Altogether the sculpture is about 34 pounds.
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 16, 2022 19:20:59 GMT -5
vegasjames - I'll chime in on that sculpture! HOLY COW THAT'S AMAZING! Thank you.
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Post by rockjunquie on Mar 16, 2022 19:40:03 GMT -5
vegasjames- that is so cool! I would never have guessed there was a cookie sheet in there. I can't believe you shaped ALL of those pieces. Wow! But, it sure paid off. That's amazing.
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Mar 16, 2022 20:15:28 GMT -5
vegasjames thank you for sharing the process of putting the sculpture together with pictures. I can't even imagine how many hours you put in to creating that. The big question is: Did you win the contest?
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Post by jasoninsd on Mar 16, 2022 20:47:08 GMT -5
vegasjames - James, thank you SO much for sharing how you went about this masterpiece...and it really is! I've come back several times to look at those pictures. That piece is absolutely stunning!
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Post by vegasjames on Mar 16, 2022 21:44:56 GMT -5
vegasjames thank you for sharing the process of putting the sculpture together with pictures. I can't even imagine how many hours you put in to creating that. The big question is: Did you win the contest? Since it was a lot of trial and error I had to keep redoing a lot of stuff. So altogether I think it took around 3 1/2 months to complete.
Yes, won by a landslide. They have not had the contest since. Sucks because I had a cool idea for a new sculpture I would have done for it.
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